Should You Start a Bullet Journal in 2019?

One of the things I’m enjoying the most in my everyday life at the moment is bullet journaling. Coincidently, it is also the most popular topic on my blog. Knowing that January is a month of trying new things, I thought it would be fitting to delve into the world of bujos a little more deeply over the next few weeks in the hope that it could help out some of you wanting to start one this year.

Today, I thought I’d kick things off with the big, obvious question: why bullet journal? Why not just use a diary with the ready-made calendars or an app on your phone? What is the point of all of this? What is the hype all about? If these are the questions you’re currently facing in your struggle to unearth an organisational method that will work for you this year, then you’ve come to the right place. This blog post isn’t about ‘converting’ people to the bujo way of life, it’s more a source of information – giving you the tools to decide whether this is for you or not.

Bullet journals fulfil two desires in one:

Organisation and creation. You don’t have to think of these two things as completely spearate entities anymore, as a bujo combines them together. You get to plan your life out while also having an outlet for the more arty part of your brain. Increasing your productivity through creativity, what could be better than that?

Bujos provide the motivation to stay organised…

By creating new spreads every week, in different colours and fonts and materials, it actually becomes exciting to plan the days ahead of you and prioritise tasks (yeah, I give you permission to laugh at that, it does sound a little pathetic). Even though it can seem a bit silly to get a buzz from planning upcoming events, at the end of the day, if it’s helping you to procrastinate less then why not!

…but also the motivation to stay creative.

On the flipside of this, if I’ve planned several weeks in my journal without producing a more arty page, I feel an itch to rectify this. I think these two seemingly separate parts of my life, the rigid planner and brush-happy painter, have a symbiotic relationship. Kind of like the yin and yang of my sanity: I need both to be happy and the melding of the two in one space encourages the growth of both.

They can be a great wellbeing resource…

Somewhere to log thoughts and feelings, track health concerns and fitness schedules, and jot down lines of poetry. The pages adapt as your need for them does: have a lot going on? You can draw as many boxes as you need to rationalise your ideas. Want to understand your emotions better? You are able to track whatever you want through designing your own spreads. Feeling overwhelmed? You have a blank page for verbal vomit.

…and the perfect place to store memories.

You know that random polaroid photo floating around that doesn’t have a home, and the concert tickets collecting dust at the back of a drawer? A bujo is the perfect place to stick these in. You can keep all these precious moments in one place and whenever nostalgia strikes you can easily access those memories with the flick of a page.

Bujos are as simple or as complicated as you want to make them:

It’s so versatile, you really can shape it to be whatever you need it to be. You can use symbols to keep the whole process concise and clear, or take up whole pages with rambling scrawl. It can be a place simply for your to-do lists or a place to keep meticulous notes on certain aspects of your life.

But is it for you?

I’d say that you’re never going to really know that unless you give it a go. If you’re not interested in the arty, creative side of things, there are wonderful examples of minimalist bujos out there (just give it a search or join one of the many groups dedicated to this on Facebook). If you do love the design part of it, then you’re in for a treat: Pinterest is the place to go.

The main point of a bullet journal is to help you to be productive; it doesn’t really matter how you go about it, whether that’s by drawing plain boxes or intricate floral borders, what matters is that you find a method that works for you. If you’re at all remotely intrigued by any of this, you could try out bullet journaling for 2019 and see how it goes – you never know, it could be the thing you’ve been missing all these years (it certainly was for me).

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